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Prosecutor: Rape case hinges on witnesses
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The alleged victims were boys, ages 8 to 11.
YOUNGSTOWN — Jurors in Michael Kaufman’s rape trial will have to decide the case based on witness accounts of events, without having any DNA evidence presented to them, an assistant Mahoning County prosecutor said.
“You’ll have to decide this case the way juries have decided cases for hundreds of years, by listening to the testimony of the witnesses,” and without scientific evidence, said J. Michael Thompson, assistant prosecutor.
Thompson made his remarks during opening statements Tuesday in Kaufman’s trial before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
Kaufman, 40, of Berkshire Drive, is on trial on six counts of rape, four counts of gross sexual imposition and one count of felonious sexual penetration.
The indictment says Kaufman committed the crimes in Mahoning County against two male relatives while they were between the ages of 8 and 11. They are now 15 and 20 years old and reside in Wisconsin.
The older boy lived in the Mahoning Valley when the alleged offenses occurred, but the younger boy has always resided in Wisconsin, and the offenses alleged against him occurred when he made summer visits here.
“Michael Kaufman is a child molester” who took advantage of his authority over young boys and their trust in him to use them as “targets for his sexual desires,” Thompson said.
Thompson told the jurors that sexual abuse of children takes place in private, with only the perpetrator and the victim present, and that youthful victims often take years to come forward with their accusations.
“It’s just everybody’s best recollection,” Kaufman’s lawyer, John B. Juhasz, told the six-man, six-woman jury, adding that no logs or diaries of events were kept and witnesses wouldn’t give precise accounts.
Although the alleged offenses against the younger boy began in 2001, Juhasz said the younger boy did not come forward with his allegations until the end of his 2004 visit here. Boardman police investigated those alleged crimes, and then closed the case, he said.
Nothing more happened in this case until June 2007, when the older alleged victim told Youngstown police Kaufman sexually abused him while he was between the ages of 5 and 11 in Kaufman’s residence, Juhasz said.
However, Juhasz added that Kaufman didn’t yet own the house on Berkshire Drive, where those offenses allegedly occurred, when the boy was 5.
The Mahoning County grand jury indicted Kaufman last fall after it received a direct presentment of the case from the prosecution. The alleged crimes occurred between 1995 and 2003.
“The devil in this case is in the details,” Juhasz said. “Those details will help you assess the credibility of the witnesses,” he added. “Listen carefully to the evidence,” and be objective, he urged the jurors.